Although Johannes Brahms did not write a single opera, his unappreciated and rarely performed cantata Rinaldo appears to suggest how a large-scale dramatic work composed by him might have sounded. The composer had to listen to many unpleasant remarks about this work. Long before its first performance, which was given in 1869 under Brahms’s baton, with the participation of a monumental, 300-strong male choir, Clara Schumann was asking her friend whether Rinaldo would prove a worthy successor to Ein deutsches Requiem. The critics treated Brahms’s cantata even more brutally, describing it as ‘Baroque fancy’ and accusing the work of lacking sensuality. After the composer’s death, there were occasional caustic suggestions that it was good that Brahms never wrote an opera.

An opera was composed, and successfully produced, by Richard Strauss. Unlike Brahms’s Rinaldo, Strauss’s Intermezzo and, in particular, Der Rosenkavalier became celebrated works in the history of the genre. Both of these comic operas were premiered at the famous Dresden Semperoper. The former is based on an astonishing libretto written by the composer himself, referring to the amusing peripeteia of his marital life. The other became Strauss’s greatest operatic success, and extracts from this work in an instrumental suite often appear on philharmonic programmes.

Bartłomiej Gembicki